Life Beyond the Briefs

The REAL Secret Behind Law Firm Growth

• Brian Glass

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Discover the core truth behind law firm success. It’s not about tactics; it’s about personal development and growth. Understand how chasing the right goals can lead to transformative changes in your practice.

• The importance of personal development in law firm growth 
• The hard truth about achieving your financial goals 
• Strategies to foster a growth-oriented mindset 

If you're finding value in our content, please take a moment to share this podcast with someone who might benefit, subscribe, and leave us a rating and review. 


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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another Friday solo episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own, design and build law practices that they enjoy showing up to on Monday. I know it's a novel idea. So I am just back from Funnel Hacking Live 10, which is Russell Brunson's premier, or at least largest event out in Las Vegas. It was a four-day long event which, by the way, that's too long for events of going from eight in the morning to 8 pm at night, for really for four nights in a row. It was an amazing event and I learned at that event the real secret for growing your law firm. I'm going to be sharing it with you later this episode, but first, friends, can you do me a favor? Podcasts like mine grow because of people like you, and what I mean by that is the only way that a small podcast that isn't running ads on other podcasts is going to grow is if you share it with somebody else, or if you do us a favor of subscribing and leaving a rating and review, and then the algorithm will do the work of sharing it with people who listen to podcasts like you, and so that's the favor that I ask of you. I don't run any ads on this show, except for ads for my own thing, because I think they're disruptive. And I might only ask of you, if you're getting value from the shows, that you share it with one other person, or leave us a rating and a review and subscribe so that the algorithm can do its work.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now did I get you with the clickbait title the Real Secret to Law Firm Success, and actually, as I record this, I don't know whether that's going to be the title, but I do know that real is going to be capitalized in whatever title I choose to put out there. So here's the real secret, is it? The shit is hard work and the shit requires you to develop as a person, and that's the thing that I heard from the stage in Las Vegas again and again is that it's not tactics, it's not your strategy, it's your personal development and it's your growth as a person. Now here's the thing At the top of the funnel ain't nobody selling. You got to develop personally, right? Which is why you have clickbait titles like the real secret, right? I'm watching this phenomena We've hit like in the last two years seems to be a new coach in the law firm coaching space just about every other week and I saw another video pop up by somebody who's running a mega successful firm, and the promise in the video is something like how to take your firm and earn seven or eight figures in take-home pay Like not revenue, take-home pay and how to do that easily, simply and without investing any money.

Speaker 1:

And the only thing I can think is like fucking bullshit. But there's a formula to writing this copy which you can rip off and duplicate in your law firm. If you just find and replace law firm growth with trust and estates or personal injury case or criminal defense, and that formula is. Here's the result that you want, right? The result is for law firm owners two times the money, half the time, half the hours, right. You see this in like at least three different companies ads how to make twice the money in half the hours, right. And then in parentheses easy or cheap, sometimes both right. The simple way to make twice the money in half the hours, in parentheses, and it won't cost you anything, right? And you'll see that in some GLM stuff too, because at the top of the funnel, that's what everybody's interested. Everybody is interested in buying the thing that makes you twice the money in half the hours, right, and if anybody had that thing, it wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be cheap because you wouldn't give it away, right. But the real secret is the way to make twice the money in half the hours is you have to develop as a person, and maybe this is why I'm not the best salesperson for great legal marketing, because I will tell you upfront, this shit is hard, right, you were going to put in way more hours, you were going to make less money initially and eventually you're going to grow it to a place where you're happy, like to bring home seven or eight figures in personal income.

Speaker 1:

You can't do it free, you can't do it cheap and you can't do it without risk, because at best at a firm that size, you're bringing home what? 20, 25% profit margin, which means if you're bringing home a million dollars, you have $3 million of overhead. If you're bringing home a million dollars, you have $3 million of overhead. If you're bringing home $10 million, you have $30 million of overhead. Right, and that's at a 25% profit margin and that's recurring cost. If you have $30 million of overhead, that's almost $3 million a month in charges. That is stressful, that is awfully expensive, to be running ads and doing the marketing and meeting the payroll every month to be able to bring home eight figures in personal income.

Speaker 1:

I'm not bringing home eight figures in personal income. The thought of doing that stresses me out. The thought of having a $3 million monthly nut stresses me out. I don't know that I'm interested in doing that, although we did just set a $25 million 10-year target, right. What I'm interested in doing is the thing that I'm going to tell you about in this episode, which is chase the man, not the money. Chase the man or chase the woman, not the money. Now, what does that mean? I heard Andy Elliott say this from the stage out in Vegas, and I'll come back to my personal thoughts on Andy Elliott and guys like him, but he's absolutely right. The goal isn't actually to build a $25 million firm.

Speaker 1:

For me, the goal isn't, I don't think, to bring home seven or eight figures in personal income. Maybe that's not the way to state that, right, that may be your end result goal, but if you make that your aim, you will never get there. The aim has to be to do all of the things that somebody who's making seven or eight figures in personal income or to do all the things that a law firm that's operating with $25 million does. Let me give you an analogy, because maybe that'll help. The goal isn't actually like to lose 15 pounds. The goal is to become somebody who eats in a calorie deficit and works out four times a week with weights. The goal isn't actually to run a marathon. It's to become somebody who does a long run on a Saturday, two midsize runs in the middle of the week and some sprint training in the middle of the week also, and if you check those boxes then you'll hit the end result goal. But if all you're looking at is the end result goal, it becomes much more challenging, if not impossible, to hit it, which is why so many people set new goals every January 1st and have failed those goals by February 12th. You have to chase the man, become the person who's capable of doing that, and then you will achieve the result. If all you do is look at your bank account and chase the result, you will never get there because you won't evolve as a person.

Speaker 1:

Now I said I'd come back to what I think about Andy Elliott, and what you notice is top of the funnel right. The attention attraction content that's put out by Andy Elliott, who, if you're not familiar, is a marketing and sales coach in the automotive industry at least primarily in the automotive industry is exactly like Grant Cardone's. Top of the funnel is flashy, proclaims it to be easy, just like the title of this episode. But bottom of the funnel, if you watch their long form content, it's actually really good. There's a lot of really smart stuff coming out of those guys' mouths. But at the top of the funnel you can't attract people by telling them that it's going to be hard. You have to tell them it's going to be easy, get them into the funnel and be able to talk to them for long enough to convince him that doing the hard thing is going to be worth it. And frankly and this would be another plug for subscribing to my podcast if you're new to this and you discovered me somehow as somebody who's got a couple of good marketing ideas, a handful of good management ideas and some ambition, then I've got to be able to talk to you for long enough to convince you to actually do the work right. If you pay attention, you'll see we give most of our stuff away for free, even to competitors, like somebody else who's in Northern Virginia can go and download that chiropractor referral letter playbook that I send out, because I know most of them won't do it.

Speaker 1:

There's a universal rule that Myron Golden, who's a fantastic sales closer, talked about called Price's Law. And Price's Law is this 50% of the production of any domain is produced by the square root of the domain. Now, what the hell does that mean? It means if you have four people that are producing money for a company, two of them will produce half the revenue. Okay, that makes sense, right. But if you have four people that are producing money for a company, two of them will produce half the revenue. Okay, that makes sense, right. But if you have 81 people, nine of them are going to produce half the revenue, right. If you have 400 people, 20 of them are going to produce half the revenue. And what you see is the larger the domain, the smaller the percentage of people who are doing the production. And you say how can that be that with 400 people, 400 income earners, 20 of them are producing 50% of the result?

Speaker 1:

And the reason is this almost everybody is willing to do enough to be in the mediocre. Many and very few are willing to do what it takes to be in the fantastic few. And again, that's why we can give so much stuff away, because I know most people won't take any action with any of it For years. We got people that have been on email lists for years and they reach out and they say can you help me? And I look at their website and I look at their marketing materials and they haven't done anything that we're teaching right Buy the books, read the books. Don't take the action, because it's not the books.

Speaker 1:

It's not the information that you're getting from this podcast, because it's not the books. It's not the information that you're getting from this podcast. It's not the seminars and the conferences that you go to. It's your own personal development and it's your own willingness to do any of the work that distinguishes the mediocre many from the fantastic few, and that is the real secret to law. Firm growth is that you have to be the one who changes, and if you can hit your goals without changing, then the goal simply wasn't big enough. Like how boring to go through your entire life as a static character because you set small, incremental goals. That never required you to face adversity, never required you to overcome challenges never required you to step outside of the bounds of your comfort zone, because all of life happens outside your comfort zone. And one of the things that I've noticed paying attention to Brunson over the last couple of years is that more and more he is leaning into this personal development. He's building a he's going to call that a library I really would call it a shrine to personal development out in Boise, idaho, and he has spent years now collecting these first editions of Earl Nightingale and Dale Carnegie books that he's going to put in this shrine. And he's building a conference center out there also.

Speaker 1:

And if you've never watched Brunson sell something, you have to do it. But you have to. You got to do it, like, if you are a fan of the art of sales in the way that I'm a fan of the art of sales. Two guys who I paid the most attention to are Alex Hermosi and Russell Brunson, because they will both tell you exactly what they're doing to you while they're doing it to you. So Brunson puts on this four-day event and the first day he holds up all of his star students as examples and gives an award. Right, great Legal Marketing won a two comma club award for selling a million dollars worth of information across the ClickFunnels platform last year, and so we got an award for that right. And he parades all these people in front of everybody else who it's like your first time ever. At the conference Day two, they hit you with a fire hose of information everything you could ever want on how to grow your social media or your YouTube or your sales funnels, or how to get better at copywriting. You could never absorb all of this stuff. Even if you watched the replays three times, downloaded all the workbooks and the slides, you could never absorb all of it.

Speaker 1:

And then he goes into the sales pitch for the product and I bought a $10,000 info product from him because I just God, it was so masterful. So he says, hey, we launched this beta thing. It's called the Prime Mover Coaching Group, launched this in August, brought a couple of students through, and I just like, before I tell you any more about this program, I want to bring a couple of them up on stage. I'm only going to ask them two questions. Number one when did you invest? Number two when did you get your investment back? And he marches 35 people across the stage to say I invested in August or September and I got it back the first time that I delivered the sales pitch and everybody, except for one of these 35 people, got their money back by the third time they had delivered the sales pitch. Just a masterful amount of social proof. And then he put so much value, so much value into the thing that he's delivering and when I've now gotten into the program there's even more value than was promised from the stage. He's just an amazing salesperson.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, that's day two and then we celebrate the people that bought at lunch. Everybody comes with a special lunch where they pitch you on the upsell on day three and then on day four day four he sold seats to his conference center library shrine thing that he's building, and the seat license right. So not even tickets to the individual events, which you have to buy later, but the seat license for this thing. Million dollars for a front row seat to have the right of first refusal on any of the seats, on any tickets to an event in your seat in the future. Million dollars. He sold 14 of them, 14 because he delivers so much value and has built up such a great reputation for over delivering on value that people go no brainer like I'm gonna get my money back on that.

Speaker 1:

And so if you are a student of the science of sales and persuasion and marketing, you owe it to yourself to get to the next one of whatever Russell Brunson is putting on. But know this, know this the real secret is you're going to have to develop into somebody who's capable of doing great things. That's it, that's the secret. There is no info product, there is no sales and marketing script that works if you don't develop into somebody who is capable of doing great things. And I want to leave you with this If there's anybody who looks like you or has your background or has suffered the unique bad things that have happened to you in your life, who has gone on to be successful and has done great things, then you are capable also of doing great things, and all it takes is you putting aside the people that say twice the money, half the time, easy, cheap, risk-free, and beginning to go to work for yourself. I believe in you. Have a great weekend.

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